 Hello, everybody. We're going to get started. Thanks for your patience. Welcome to the Diversity Luncheon. My name is Caitlin O'Connell. I run content and diversity programming for the Cloud Foundry Foundation. I'm really pleased to see the room so full today. How many of you are attending the Diversity Lunch for the first time? Awesome. Welcome. I ask this at every lunch, and I'm always amazed by how many new folks are here. For those of you who've been here before, this year's luncheon is a little different. Instead of a single panel, we're going to have several featured speakers, kind of a mini summit. Just like the open source project itself, the foundation is always evolving to integrate new ideas. So based on community feedback, we open to CFP for this diversity luncheon to make it even more inclusive. If you're moved by today's talks and feel you have something you'd like to share at the EU summit, please be sure to submit to the CFP for the lunch and the Hague. I also want to encourage all of you to use this time to create a dialogue. After each speaker, we'll have the opportunity for a Q&A with the audience. That's you. Don't be shy about asking questions, and don't assume that you should already know the answer to what you're asking. This is a space for all of us to learn. And learning doesn't mean that you walk through the door today already knowing everything you're going to hear. So much of doing the work of diversity and social justice is creating space to ask non-judgmental questions and to respond to them non-judgmentally. That's how we move forward. That's how we learn and grow. The foundation is committed to a code of conduct that includes five basic tenets. Be open, be inclusive, be kind, be transparent, and be curious. What's not included, but something I think is foundational to who we are, is be the change. I'm extremely proud to tell you that since Boston Summit last April, we've doubled the number of women and non-binary attendees at Summit here today. 24% of attendees are non-male. Maybe by next year, we'll have gender parity. This is the fifth Cloud Foundry diversity lunch that I've hosted, and a lot has changed. We're having conversations nationally about racism, trans rights, and gender equality. The Me Too movement has set new expectations for how we expect people, especially men, in power to behave. It's a really challenging era, and we're pushing up against dogmas so ingrained in our culture that expunging it feels like trying to scrub the green out of grass. It can be hard to feel that any progress is being made or that our voices are being heard over the din. And I know sometimes all I want to do is huddle inside a bunker and forget about everything going on in the world around me. But I also know that silence is defeat and that progress takes time and it hurts along the way. Conversations can be hard to start, so let's take advantage of the next hour and a half and have some good conversations. Please welcome to the stage Denise Hew, a senior software engineer at Pivotal who has worked on a variety of open source and enterprise products, served briefly as the product manager of Pivotal's on-demand service broker SDK, then moved across an ocean to the Toronto office where she now works on enabling high confidence release engineering for the PCF program as part of the master pipeline team. Denise, welcome. The bio was that long, read out loud. I'm gonna turn off mirroring displays and just, because I need speaker notes, otherwise I'm gonna riff. Okay, cool, so thank you all for being here. I'm gonna be talking today about mentorship and sponsorship and what are the differences between the two. Before I get started, that's my Twitter handle. If you're the kind of person who likes to follow along at your own pace, the slides are already online at that link, deniseyou.io slash sponsorship. I'll flash that link up again at the end of this talk and feel free to tag me on Twitter, whatever. So I wanna do some framing before I dive into the content. If you're here as an individual contributor, this is not a self-help talk for you today. If you are an individual contributor, the only message that I want you to leave with today is your lived experiences are valid, your feelings are real, and your contributions are valuable. The actionable parts of this talk are not directed at you today, but I'm so glad that you're here. If you are a member of leadership, if you are a manager or a director or any kind of engineering leader, you are my primary audience today and thank you so much for being here and for taking time out of your day. So let's get started. As you may have guessed from the title, mentorship and sponsorship are not equivalent interactions. So in this silly cartoon example, imagine that you have a individual contributor, a kitten who's trying to be a better at fishing. So a kitten has a mentor, Orange Cat, who says you just need to spend some time figuring out what kinds of fish you wanna catch. That's what's holding you back. Fortunately, kitten also has a sponsor, Siamese Cat, who recognizes that at this point in time, kitten is not physically large enough to reach the tank. So Siamese Cat gives kitten a stool so that she can see over the edge of the tank. So what's the difference here? When you mentor someone, the onus is placed on the individual to change their behaviors and perhaps their perspectives. When you sponsor someone, the onus is on leadership to change the environment so that individuals can be recognized for things that they are already doing, for skills that they already have. So what I don't wanna say today is that like mentorship is unimportant because it actually is very important, but you have to use it in the right context. So sometimes when an individual's current actions and behaviors are misaligned with what's required for them to grow, mentorship can be a very effective tool for course correction, especially in the early stages of someone's career. But please bear in mind that your lived experiences are going to be different from those of your mentee. And the more that you like obviously the further your experiences are, it's more true that what might, what worked for you might not work for another person. And sometimes advice can even be harmful. So I'm gonna give an example of ineffective mentorship that I received early on in my career. No one will take you seriously unless you spend a lot of time contributing to open source. Your GitHub profile should be full of green squares before you apply for a new job. So this came from someone that I casually knew from the tech community in London. Even though they had good intentions and maybe the strategy worked for them, I knew that there were other things that I wanted to do with my weekends and evenings and there were different skills that I wanted to grow. And also I didn't get paid to work full time on open source at the time. So following this advice literally would have burned me out and left me no time to develop the skills that I actually needed to advance my career. I'm gonna give you an example of effective mentorship that I received. If you spend too much time on diversity work, that will become your visible work. If you wanna be an engineering leader, you should focus in the short term on building technical credibility. Once you're a senior engineer, it will be safer and more impactful for you to vocally advocate for inclusion and diversity. So I'm paraphrasing this a little bit, but this advice came from Tanya Riley who I met last year in New York. The difference between Tanya's advice and the other person's advice is, Tanya provided clear context for when you should follow her advice. If the goal that she describes is not your goal, then this advice is not for you and that's okay. So I think there are two main characteristics of effective mentorship. Effective mentorship, first of all, builds on top of a strong understanding of your mentee's career goals. If you don't understand where your mentee is trying to go, why are you giving random advice? Like what are you course correcting towards? And secondly, effective mentorship accounts for realities about how the mentee's contributions are likely to be valued in the current world that they live in. So you should never ever give advice for an ideal world because we don't live in an ideal world. We're constrained by the realities of how our work is likely to be valued. So I wanna close out the mentorship section by addressing the question, how do I know if my mentorship is likely to cause harm? Because I think most of the time, I think all of the time, people have good intentions. I think assuming good intentions by default is generally a good way to operate. Harm is caused by things being invisible to us. So how can we address that? You can mitigate a lot of potential harm by asking for consent before you give advice. So here's a trick that I learned from my brother who actually is a social worker in South Boston. Would you like me to listen or would you like my help with problem solving? So if you ask this question, you empower your mentee to tell you what they actually need out of the relationship that you have. This is an incredibly powerful tool for building rapport and building trust. And without trust, you can't learn anything else about where your mentee is trying to go. But even after a lot of thoughtful mentorship, individual contributors can still plateau. So I'm gonna show you a very scientific graph. Imagine that your career success generally goes up over time for most people. And maybe you have little bumps in climbing the career ladder when you have mentorship interactions and course corrections. But you also have diminishing returns. I know this is not very scientific, but there is a lot of research and a lot of anecdotal evidence that backs up the suggestion that mentorship will only get you so far. So when you start to plateau, this is actually a great time for sponsorship to come in. Although in my opinion, I think it's more impactful to sponsor frequently and freely before someone plateaus. So let's revisit what we mean by sponsorship. Sponsorship places the onus on leaders to change the environment so that individuals can get recognition for the things that they are already doing. So what does sponsorship look like in practice? I'll give a couple of examples. Sponsorship might involve advocating for someone to rotate into a visible leadership role on a high impact team. Perhaps there's one role that has a track record of growing new managers or new directors. If you're the person you're helping wants to be on that track, then this is something concrete that you can do. You can lend them your network. You can make introductions that will open up new career opportunities inside your organization or outside your organization. You can exercise some of your influence to help someone earn a promotion or a title adjustment. Or maybe you can vocally acknowledge the value of someone's work within your organization. So I kind of joke about the reply all button, but if there are company-wide emails, I think a judicious use of the reply all button can actually be really powerful if you're using it to amplify someone's contributions. I think sponsorship boils down to asking this question. What are the things that are currently holding back this person? And what can I, as a member of leadership, do to remove those obstacles? I think you'll find that once this person is really set up for success, they'll start doing even more awesome things. As the sponsor, don't forget to keep one eye on their progress also. It's not about just giving something and walking away. It's about building a sustained relationship, about building trust, tracking the results and actually iterating so that you can become an even better sponsor in the future. My final thought here is that I think you might be able to start sponsoring people before you're a senior leader. So I have a quick story. Last week I was talking at a conference with someone who does content curation for O'Reilly and he asked me, do you know anyone who might be interested in creating content? And I said, yes. Here are these three names of three awesome women that I work with who might be interested in this. But if you decide to do this, just remember to put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. Don't sponsor other people at the expense of your own growth and your own velocity. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for Denise? Don't be shy. Thank you very much, Denise. So traditionally, mentorship has been used in IT roles and pivoting towards a more supportive role. I think the hard part is delineating maturity of an individual. So example, like parent child, the, if you call it sponsorship or mentorship, of a child is very different than adult to adult. But levels of maturity, we still recognize her at various levels. So I think the thing that I personally struggle with always is when to give somebody the stool, for example, or when to ask questions that lead them to go get a stool, right? And that's a hard question. And so I just like the way that you put those questions into my mind again and kind of refresh that. So I guess it's more of a thank you. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that difference. I think often asking the person how you can help them goes a really, really long way. So I think a lot of people, especially people from underrepresented backgrounds, know a lot more about their career path than they're given credit for. So I always advocate for just deferred to empowerment, deferred to granting people autonomy. Any other questions? Hey, Denise, that was awesome talk, thank you. The question I had is about coaching. And if you think that's a different role for mentorship or sponsorship and how that might also help an individual. Or do you see it as different? I often read about coaching and mentoring used interchangeably. So I don't know if there's a more nuanced difference to those two points. I guess I would lump coaching closer with mentorship because when you coach someone, it's still asking them to change their behavior, right? Also, I think Lara Hogan has probably written about this though. So I just wanna give her a shout out. If anyone's interested in reading more deeply about the subject, Lara Hogan is one of the best like voices writing and speaking about this. Thank you. Do we have one more question in the back? Thanks, Denise. The stage, Raquel Breternet, a senior designer at Pivotal who works on making technology more accessible to everyone. Thank you so much. So you should have just gotten some pieces of paper at your table and God help me if you have pens. But I wanted to start this with a design prompt and maybe for our purposes, it's just in your head. But I'd love it if you could all kind of grab some paper and a pen and take a couple minutes to design a wheelchair ramp for a building entrance. Don't worry about it if you're not a designer. This does not have to be a technical draft but get out some ideas about how you would design a wheelchair ramp for a building entrance. Just a couple more seconds. Who is brave and would like to share their design? Probably nobody. Anybody proud of what they've done? All right, let's hear it. I lost my mic person. We got a smart one here. Longer the stairs. What is the space available in order for me to make this wheelchair ramp? How close is it to the street? How close is it to the sidewalk? Like there's a lot of questions you have to answer before you can just design something. Very true. Thank you for being smarter than me. Anybody else wanna share or did that scare everyone out? Yeah, all right. Well, I'm sorry to say, let's try one more. Yes, please. So I made sure it was a double door to be wide enough and then I figured out where the door would open to so there'd be room to get the chair around it. Then it made like a curved space so they could turn and then curved space again at the end so it wasn't square and you're like kinda trying to jostle your way through the corner. It's pretty gentle slope and then the sidewalk is out to a place in the curb where they can actually get off the sidewalk too. Great. Yeah, I like how you're thinking about the kind of the technical requirements of the wheelchair and the human experience of entering the building. Let's try a different design prompt now. Let's take a couple minutes now, get a new piece of paper and design a better way for both wheeled and walking people to enter a conference hall. Couple more seconds. All right, did anyone come up with something that they'd like to share this time around? Don't be shy. I'm sure you all have great ideas. Doors, you've got issues of being able to push those automation buttons, those kind of things. You're gonna get people getting in each other's way. Sorry. So yeah, a big hole in the wall as wide an aperture as possible because people that are on their feet are gonna be more nimble and able to, they're gonna try and get in smaller spaces and you need much more space for the doorway than you would need for just folks on their feet and trying to avoid the need for ramps. So taking things away, big hole, wall. That was about as imaginative as I was. I like it, you're already getting creative and you're already thinking outside of a ramp. Anyone else? Hello, so I designed a stair, ramp, lift combo. So it starts out as resting state as a pair of stairs. There's my little sensor there and you walk up to it and maybe there's a button or a gesture as you can do and it will convert to a ramp if that's what you want. And if not, you can go step onto it and we'll fly it now to a lift and just lift you up to the level of the entrance way. Wow, very fancy. Thank you for going through that experience with me, everyone. The reason that I did this is to think about the ways that we're looking at the problems that we have to solve and very often we like to think about our product problems like this. At least many of us do with like a human centered focus and a goal and a way to kind of define what is the kind of the job to be done, right? The entering a conference hall. But when it comes to making things compliant for people with disabilities, we're like, oh, just throw a ramp on it. Why? That is technically maybe accessible, but it's not inclusive. So I wanted to tell you today that it's bad to have just a compliance mindset. It's not enough to just be accessible. It is so much better when you start creating a design that's inclusive. And what's kind of popped into that second prompt there is that I just included wheeled and walking people. And in that sense, you were able to think about ways to enter a conference hall that expand outside maybe just your immediate experience, but that doesn't just put you into the box of a wheelchair ramp. And so again, speaking of wheelchair ramps, just to continue with this metaphor, here's an example of kind of two options. One that is technically accessible. There is a ramp and you can enter the building, but it's hard to find. It's difficult to navigate. Maybe dangerous. It's kind of a creepy alley. I don't know. Do I even know that I can find it? Who knows? And then here's an example of something that is both accessible and inclusive. So it's right at the front. It's the entrance to the hall. It can also be helpful for people on strollers, moms with their kids, people on skateboards. And something else that I'd like to point out is that it's also beautiful. And I think that's another thing that we forget often is that beauty is not only for the able-bodied. Disabled people deserve beauty. That is like an essential element of who we are as human beings and why we care about the things that we do. So I want to talk a little bit about why this is. Why is it so hard to enter so many buildings? And so I'm going to start with some history. There was an architect named Le Corbusier. He kind of started modernism. It was a whole thing. And he decided to create the sort of default, this able-bodied man of average height and dimension that he could standardize his design around. And it was called Limogular. That's what it looked like. That was his drawing. You can imagine what happened there is that he set a standard for designing buildings around one type of person that doesn't fit everybody else. So what happens? We get situations in which disabled people can't access their halls of justice, can't get money out of ATMs, sometimes can't even get off the streets. And so you can imagine what happened next. Really awesome disability activists took to the streets and started smashing curbs and making their own curb cuts so they can have their own accessible ramps on and off the street. Another group of activists in Berkeley actually went under the cover of night and created ramps by pouring their own concrete. It's pretty dope. Well worth looking into. And it's time for us to do the same with an accessible software. That's actually a GIF and there's like a hammer that smashes it, but this is a PDF now, so never mind. Just gotta imagine it. So some myths about digital accessibility. So moving away from the physical space now. The myth number one is the idea that accessibility is a fringe need. In reality, have you ever been trying to look up a map on your GPS while you're driving with one hand and kind of half paying attention? Or you're like me and you like to scroll Twitter in bed and you're not gonna move your arm out from under your head. So if you can't reach it with one hand, you're not doing it. Or you walk out and you're a glasses fog and maybe you can't quite see for a moment or perhaps you're sitting in a crowded coffee shop and you're trying to listen to something on a conference call or maybe you're just watching a YouTube video at work and you kind of don't want people to hear around you. Or maybe you're aging. All of these are situations in which you have a disability because your disability is not based in who you are as a person. It is a mismatch between you and your environment and what you're trying to accomplish. And so when we start to solve problems for all of these different access needs situations, we actually greatly expand the usability of all of our products. So there's this really great concept of disability kind of put out by cat homes of formerly Microsoft in that all of us have these kind of different types of disability at different times. So some are permanent, you're blind, you only have one arm. Some are temporary, you're a new parent carrying your child or you are in a really loud space or maybe the screen on your computer broke. And some are situational. Maybe you're just in a really loud space or maybe you're trying to understand a YouTube video that's in a different language. There's so, so, so many different situations in which we all can use assistive technologies to enhance our own abilities. And so actually we will all need different levels of access, whether it's now or it's later. All of us will have this experience. So why aren't we solving for it now? And in reality, solving for the extremes actually does make better products for all. Lake Ribousier designed for that one line in the middle. And so he only helped that tiny amount of people. But if you solve for the people here and the people here, you actually cover everything and you help really increase the usability across the board. Myth number two is that accessibility makes visual design uglier. I used to lead a team of visual designers and this is what I heard over and over again. It's like, why can't I use this turquoise that I love? And the reality is that, yes, it might be a beautiful color, but trends do change. And user test after user test after user test has shown that the better contrast something is, even among teens, even among the elderly population, the more legible it is and the more people appreciate even the beauty of a piece of product. It has also actually harmed people. There's this great article on Wired where this guy was writing about how he thought that his eyesight was beginning to grow, but it turned out that he was suffering from design because of this trend of grays. Yikes. If you're a designer of any kind, you do not want your users to say they're suffering from your design. I don't care how beautiful you think it is. And actually, call out to some old design heroes, Charles and Ray Eames. Design does depend largely on constraints. If you approach color contrast and accessibility needs as a design constraint, all it will do is strengthen your work in the end of the day. So actually, the best design is the one that works the best and not the one that looks the nicest according to whatever trend of the day that you're experiencing. Myth number three is that it takes too long so it's not a business priority. I hear this a lot. What you're doing when you say that is that it is not a business priority for every single one of these people to either use your product or be employed at your company. That's kind of an asshole thing to say. It also kind of shuts you out from a lot of really good employees and workers and users that you're just ignoring completely. That's bad business no matter what you slice it. Also, it's the law. More recently, there have been more and more lawsuits coming out based on web accessibility. Beyonce, in fact, got sued because a blind person was not able to buy tickets off of her website. So if you think you are better than Beyonce, you are wrong. And don't worry, she fixed it. And maybe she can afford a lawsuit, can you? There's also this great quote for Frank Lloyd Wright. Got kind of a theme of the architects and designers here. You can use an eraser on the drafting table or you can use a sledgehammer on the construction site. So it's always best to start considering these things early on. Fail early, figure out accessibility early, and you don't have to shoehorn it back in and it's a whole mess afterward. And actually, the best workers and users are not gonna fit your assumption of what is default. We all look around the room. We know maybe we've often not been the default. So we can understand that. And so maybe you're thinking, okay, cool, I'm sold, but how do I, how? So I've got a few tips for you and I'll be real quick. First of all is empathy. It's really not hard to just reach out to disabled people and ask them like, how do you experience your software? How do you use a screen reader? How do you use Twitter? They're really awesome people all over the internet who just offer up these things and show how they do things and they're really amazing because honestly, disabled people were the original life hackers. They have had to spend their entire lives solving problems for themselves and they are often extremely innovative. So you're really just helping yourself out if you ask. Also, you can Google it. There are a lot of resources and a lot of beginner resources and help that you can find and I'm also welcome to point you anywhere. And there's some great guides. More and more places are publishing their particular accessibility guides based on their component libraries and their own needs. The things I like about these three, IBM has created a color system in which you can just use math to know if something is contrast accessible. So, you know, if there's a, I'm not gonna explain it anyway, you can look it up, it's really easy. Vox has created a really great checklist based in particular on content which can be missing often in digital software stuff and ATNF has worked with the government and so has some really good help on 508 compliance and also is a general great overview but there's like tons more if you can think of a company that you like and who has shown some good leadership they probably have an accessibility guide that's worth taking a browse through. And you can get everyone involved. This can feel really overwhelming and it is when you're doing it by yourself but the great news is that you don't have to. As engineers you can focus on things like semantic HTML and knowing when to implement screen reader ARIA stuff and also looking at kind of a keyboard focus. As designers you can think about inclusively designing from the beginning and reaching out to people with disabilities and making sure your designs aren't exclusive to someone. As PMs you can put it in your backlog, you can prioritize it in your stories and you can advocate for it within your organizations and you can all help each other. And you can always remember that it really is when you design for accessibility and you design inclusively, it's better for all. So I wanna end on this great quote from Oliver Sacks who's this wonderful science writer and he says that I wish for a world that views disability mental or physical, not as a hindrance but as unique attributes that can be seen as powerful assets if given the right opportunities. If I can leave you with anything today, it's a rethink of how you approach disability and how you think of disability in the world. Thank you very much. We're running a little behind so let's limit it to two questions. Stundum. Okay, well thank you so much Raquel. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Next we're gonna welcome a panel to the stage. Our first panelist is Paula Kennedy. She is the director of Pivotal Cloud Foundry Solutions in Mia where she is focused on working together with clients to drive innovation, transformation and business outcomes. Thanks. Cornelia Davis is the vice president of technology at Pivotal where she is working on ways to bring the various cloud computing models of infrastructure as a service, application as a service, container as a service and function as a service together into a comprehensive offering that allows IT organizations to function at the highest level. Hannah Foxwell is a manager at Pivotal Cloud Foundry Solutions in Mia where she helps build wildly successful platform teams with Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Genevieve Lesperos is an engineering manager at Pivotal in New York and works on the Garden Windows team. And the panel today will be moderated by our very own Swarna. Swarna's a hub for the Cloud Foundry community and a huge light at the foundation. Thank you. Yes, please. Thank you for the introductions, Caitlin. You're really kind. So, I have one question for everybody. I'll start off with one question. You can, probably we'll start with Paula. We've all witnessed stereotypes at work, right? Negative stereotypes are gender stereotypes. What are some of the experiences that stand out for you that are, where you kind of tried to follow or stick to the stereotype or where you tried to fight the stereotype and tried to stand against it? Like, if you can think of an example. Or one of the many examples. Okay, so for me, when I first joined Pivotal, it came through an acquisition and I was previously a chief operating officer at a small Cloud Foundry consulting company. So when Pivotal acquired our company, there was this weird transition phase where I didn't have a natural fit. So in a startup, I was doing all the work, all the legal, finance, HR, marketing, like all the jobs, basically. And then coming into Pivotal, I was like, well, I'm not actually qualified to do legal, marketing, finance, HR, et cetera. So there was this weird transition where I was like, well, what are you gonna do? And there was an early discussion about maybe I would maybe take my money and stay home and raise my kids was a suggestion. And my response to that was like, hell no. As much as I love my family, I'm not gonna stay home and just hang out with my kids. I want to do something. And so it took some time actually. And my original job title had the word non-technical in it, which was also kind of strange. I mean, I am non-technical. It's not that strange actually, but it's weird to have it in my job title. And it took some time to find my place, but eventually people kept telling me to stop describing myself as non-technical and seek the opportunity where I could actually add some value. And now I lead a team of extremely technical people. And it turns out that being a technical engineer or a very deep technical person is a different skill to being able to lead that team of people. And so now I have found my home within Pivotal. And as Hannah said, we make platform teams successful. That's kind of what we do. But yeah, it felt hard at the beginning to fight against that stereotype. Thank you, yep. You're right. I just want to share. So actually, I'll pile on to that because the thing that strikes me based on the question that you ask is, and it's not just in my day-in-day work, but when I'm sitting on an airplane and I'm sitting next to somebody and they say, oh, what do you do? And I say, I'm in software. And they go, oh, really? Shocking. Shocking, yep. And one of the most fun things in my career that I've had was being in a room, being at an event, and knowing that the room, because of my gender, sees me as the person who is facilitating the event or doing some kind of event planning. And then the agenda kicks off and I'm the first or second speaker and I start getting up there and talking tech and I love that shift in the room. I absolutely love that moment where everybody goes, it's the same thing as the person on the airplane. He's like, really? So I actually kind of revel in that moment, of that moment of shock. That is a great feeling, I've been there. Hannah? Well yeah, the example I would give and I sometimes spend time thinking about this was actually when I started my career, I was on a kind of graduate training program and we did rotations through lots of different teams. And I was the first person in the group of 20 who really got stuck into software development and I was like, and it was COBOL and it was on a mainframe and I didn't know that that was not a cool thing at the time, but yeah, I was the first person in that group to get stuck in and I do wonder whether or not the sort of, the expectations and the biases within the organization that I was in actually influenced my decision to abandon that track and go towards project management and people management. So I do sometimes think about whether or not maybe I should have fought against that and stayed more technical for a few more years at the beginning of my career. It's amazing how certain of those instances and situations scars or change our entire direction for the rest of the life. Any stereotypes? Yeah, I think I can agree with everything that's been said and I think one of the quotes that Denise had in her side like really stuck with me, especially about doing glue work. I think at the beginning of my career I worked really hard not to present to feminine or to take on what would fit the gender stereotype. So I actively tried to not take on responsibilities that would fit with like, women are good at time management, women are good at planning, women are good at product, women are good at design and so I tried really hard to push against that and then I was the only female engineer in an office at one point and I started doing diversity inclusion work and then it actually became a problem such that like people only saw me for diversity inclusion work and stopped seeing me as an engineer. And so then I had to push all of that away and go back into engineering and focus more on that so that I didn't just be looked at as the person who runs diversity inclusion for this office. And after a while I think I realized that it was really unfortunate that I was making a lot of choices about my career based off of avoiding a gender stereotype and then eventually like chose to become a manager which I was worried about as like something that is good for a woman because she has good people skills. And yeah, it was challenging. It reminds me of Alice. For those of you who probably don't know her, she is a phenomenal engineer. Alice Gold was on Twitter, once tweeted that every time a female engineer, I will go with a woman engineer, ask for some kind of career advice. The first thing she gets is, oh, you should definitely look at some kind of managerial role because women have great people skills. Sometimes, probably that is correct but we probably do not want that. Sorry? Nope. Cornelia, I want to go back to you and ask you, as you said kind of like living in that moment when you see the transition and the expressions is really amazing but we're all guilty and I'm pretty sure you have been as well. At some point we tried to fit in. We tried to be one of the guys. Do you regret that or should we fit in? And more importantly, how does that change our own self-definition of self-confidence or perception of our own selves? Yeah, so there's so much in there. So the first thing that I will start out is that I am one of those people and this is something that's really kind of been starting to bother me just very recently is I'm one of those girls and then women that especially as a girl I always hung out with the boys and it actually wasn't an attempt to fit in. It just, that's who I am. That's, there are some certain family situations I think that maybe drove that but I am comfortable there and it's okay to be comfortable around the guys. That's not an issue. Though there are definitely times where I have made those choices to fit in. So for example, if I'm doing a major, like really important presentation I might think about what I'm gonna wear and think, well, I wanna, I'm gonna wear pants. And Megan and I were chatting and I was like, you know what, this year I'm gonna wear a dress at every important presentation because exactly that I'm not gonna try to fit in. But that said, I do think that it is okay to try to fit in because the reality is that while it is totally unfair that as women we have to expend a whole lot of emotional energy and intellectual energy on navigating those stereotypes that we need to try to get around. For example, trying to make sure that I present myself in a way that's not too aggressive which is something that I fail at a lot. But it's unfair that we have to do that but at the same time there's this balance between am I just gonna go out and try to make that point and not achieve my goals and not realize the impact that I could or do I find some middle of the road? And so I do think it's okay to be aware of the contextual triggers, the context that you're in and navigate through that. And that's not just a skill that's around gender or any kind of lack of diversity or inclusion. It's just, it's a good skill as you're going through your career is to understand the context and navigate through that. And I think you can do that without a loss of individuality for sure. And so I think there's a little bit of balance. One of the last thing I'll say on this is that one of the most awesome things about being over 50 is that you really truly don't give a crap anymore. You just like, you're like, you know what? I am okay with who I am and take it or leave it type of a thing. One of my favorite quotes is some of you have probably heard it but Helen Mirren, is she not awesome? I'm sure some of you have seen the quote where she said one of the best things and I'm paraphrasing a little bit but one of the best thing, oh one of the advice that I would have, as a 70 year old, the advice that I would have given my younger self is that I should have used the words F off more often. So I'm okay with that too. I completely agree. I love how you're the kind of piece of advice that at least I got from that is, it's not about trying to fit in but it's more about understanding the context and trying to adapt yourself and taking that extra step to learn the context and then growing. But stay true to yourself. Stay true to yourself. Sometimes you have to be aggressive and sometimes you have to be more empathetic. Just a quick show of hands regardless of your gender, where you come from or what your experience. How many of you, including you four, how many of you have been asked to smile more, be less aggressive? I will. And if you did not do that, how many times were you called bossy? I see my boss raising his hand. I wasn't talking about that. Thank you. Hannah, you mentioned about senior abstract. You mentioned about trying to be a better woman in tech. I wanted to kind of let you elaborate on that. Well, yeah, I mean, a few years ago, I would never have been sat on this stage and I would never probably wouldn't even have been in this room. I kind of rejected the whole label of a woman in tech. I was like, I'm not a woman in tech. I'm a person in tech. I do not want to be seen as different and I stayed well away from all DNI initiatives, all women in tech communities. I was like, I don't want any part in that. I don't want to be seen in that way. And that was really stupid. And that was wrong. And I'm trying to correct that now because what could be better than a group of women learning from each other, sharing their experiences, sharing their problems and talking openly about what it's like to be in a minority in our industry. So yeah, I was wrong and I am trying to correct that. So I'm involved in the women in tech community in York where I'm from, I'm getting involved in the DNI initiatives within Pivotal. And I think it's brilliant and I think it's incredibly important, but I will admit that I have not always been this way and that I've been on a bit of a journey to where I am now. You're not alone. Boston Summit back, I still remember Boston Summit. I did not make my way into the Diversal Lunge I was still, I'm looking at Caitlin because I feel I'm accountable for her. I felt the same way that I do not want to be in a diversity luncheon, being the woman in tech. But then I started attending more and more of these events. And one of the things that really struck me was, I was once at this kind of inclusivity luncheon and one of the women also from India, she said, I intentionally make it a point to attend these events because I feel that I'm amongst people who are here to welcome me and invite me and are interested in talking to me regardless of who I am and where I come from. She felt that she felt welcome. She felt accepted. She was not one of a kind in that kind of group. Like that's a really unique perspective. And I had not felt that way, but ever since I could not get that, I could not shake that away from my head. And that's exactly why I really applaud Caitlin's efforts because this is the kind of safe space that I feel that it's really important for every one of us to create amongst our own communities. Kind of transitioning from Hannah's discussion about, or point about becoming a better woman in tech. Paula, you mentioned how you're a great advocate and you've been leading a whole lot of these diversity efforts and inclusive efforts at Pivotal and in the London community. So our industry, well, I don't know what industry, but our community is definitely slowly changing but surely changing. Our balance is still off. Like as Caitlin mentioned with the numbers, it's still off. So how can we all work towards bringing the right balance? And when I say balance, it's not just gender parity. It's truly letting everyone feel that they're welcome here true to the caption on your shirt. And how do we become each other's allies? Sometimes, like I look at Cornelia because she has been a huge inspiration for me in these 18 months that I've known her. How do we become our own allies? Whether allies to ourselves or allies to our peers and how do we inspire more people to become allies? Like Hannah, she was her own ally. She decided to change it. So did I. How can we bring that kind of balance in our industry or in our community? I think there's, to your question about kind of, have we changed, has the industry changed in the last few years? I think not enough, honestly. How can we improve? It seems to be the question that we still can't solve for. So I mean, the last, the first diversity lunch that some of it that I came to was in Berlin in 2016 and we were talking about some similar issues. And three years later, we're still having the same conversations. I think we've seen some small pockets of improvements here and there. But I mean, and Caitlin mentioned that our numbers are improving slowly, but it's not significant enough. And I don't have any magic answers. I think there's two problems that I think about most. One is pipeline and one is like inclusion, like kind of the inclusion part of diversity and inclusion. So the pipeline issue is just having more people from different backgrounds coming into our community. So it's where do we hire people from? How do we get people to be interested in tech in the first place? How do we go and talk at schools and run hackathons and code camps for kids and all of those things to just get more people in more people into the pipeline. Which I think is a long term. That's a longer term solution. And then right now there's, how do we keep people who are underrepresented? How do we keep them here? Which is the other part of, we talk about diversity and inclusion and it seems lots of companies talk about it and have initiatives and they're not necessarily moving the needle far enough. And again, it's not like I have a magic answer, but I think it's something that we have to keep talking about all of the time. And to Hannah's point about not wanting to be involved in this community kind of previously, I've always been passionate about being part of this and I was actually inspired when I saw Cornelia talk at a pivotal event a few years ago where she said, you can't be what you can't see. And that's a thing that's always stuck with me. And every step that I've taken in my career, I've tried to shout it loudly. So I recently got promoted and there was a lot of noise inside a pivotal about my promotion, which might sound like I'm self-promoting or bragging, but I actually want all the other women in pivotal to see, like if I can get promoted, anyone can get promoted. I mean, that's kind of the message that I want people to have. So, but it's like it's seen that it's possible to have that progress. And I mean, I've been in tech 18 years and I'm still here. So it's about just trying to keep the fight going because we haven't finished it. It kind of goes back to Denise's point about sponsorship, right? You kind of become your own sponsor and indirectly help others become their own allies as well. I was also listening to Raquel's talk and when I was mentioning about the balance, it was about we don't have a whole lot of people from different abilities in our industry, in our community. We, yes, we focus on a lot of gender parity, but there isn't a whole lot of other levels of parity as well and that was one of the things that really caught my attention was the monkey cry when that Paul and I attended in London. It was eye-opening for me because the level of accessibility discussions that were there were included things that I did not even remotely think that was even possible. Like one of the talks was about being a keyboard-only user and trying to use a website, whether it's a just generic website or an application form, like filling a form by being a keyboard-only user and the speaker challenged us to put a post-it on your trackpad, disconnect the mouse, try using a keyboard only for one day. Tell me how long you survived. I lasted five minutes. So those are the things that we really need to pay more attention. That's why I really love Raquel's talk as well, to bring those kind of discussions so that we go out and explicitly ask all the people that we don't really consider asking. Genevieve, I wanted to kind of ask you a question before I open it up for questions from the group. We all talked about how we kind of did not want to do that and you mentioned the same thing that we didn't want to be part of the diversity initiatives because we were kind of labeled as the person that would always be that woman engineer or that engineer that would lead only the DCI efforts. Was there a time when you refrained from taking a role or an opportunity or maybe you deliberately chose an opportunity to fight the stereotype or to not be in that kind of, to not be kind of forced into that mold? Yeah, mentioning earlier about the manager role, I think I avoided a number of opportunities previously to avoid fulfilling any sort of gender stereotype that others might have. But one of the things that just sort of happened when I started to try to push away those responsibilities like diversity inclusion was I focused all of my energy and passion on just being a better engineer and some things that I've built have led other women to come and talk to me and look to me as somebody that they can see and they see the things that they build and I put my name on it and I keep it in my GitHub org because I'm like, I built this. And so if you have to import it, you're gonna see that a woman made this. And I think the more women that would come to me and talk to me about it and be excited about the things that I've built or the things that I've done, the more likely I was to stick around and do other events because I think it's so important to see that. I think it's so important to see the person who's doing things that you wanna do that are really cool. I know that there are a couple of women at Pivotal who were managers before me and are now like directors, Rupa and Yui, Reina, all of these women at Pivotal who I just wanted to be. And I think that I stopped caring as much about what other people might think I was doing these things for. Is it because I'm a woman with certain skills? Fine, if you wanna think that, that's fine. But I'm gonna do what I really wanna do because other women are coming to me and are happy that I'm leading the way on something or following other women. And I think it's worked out so far. You just described a brilliant network effect. Yeah. I love that. I absolutely love that. There aren't a lot of us here. Every single one of us is a part of that network and it looks at it both. There's people that we all look up to that we aspire, we see something. And there's people that are looking up to us. Every single one of us, every single one of us in the room, men, women, it doesn't matter. We're all part of that network. And so trying to actually manipulate that network for good I think is the real puzzle. Rising tide lifts all boats. So I do wanna do a time check. We have one more fireside chat and we have 15 minutes left. So I think we may have to skip the Q and A portion of the panel. But if you have questions for any of these awesome women you can find them after the event. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. We have one more talk on stage. Please welcome Therese Stoll, the director of product management at Pivotal. She's worked in the software industry for over 20 years as a programmer, interface designer and product manager. And joining her in conversation is Graham Siner, the senior director of product for Pivotal Cloud Foundry who helped build the product management practice for Pivotal Labs and is now focused on scaling Pivotal's product organization. Thank you. Well thanks. Therese you're gonna tell us a little bit about your unusual journey, career journey and where you are now. So surely because you're working for an enterprise software company that means you probably started doing something totally different. So what was you at the beginning of your career like? Okay so out of university I went to work for Microsoft, I was an engineer and was involved in operating systems, worked on NT, I built the command line environment. Yeah, so that was the beginning of my career. Interesting, so that sounds a lot like the kind of work we're doing now. So what happened after Microsoft? So while I worked for, I built a team at Sony in New York and then I worked for Hitachi and then I had discovered that I had an artistic side and so I decided I wanted to go to art school so I built a portfolio, applied, got into art school, moved to London, had an art career, met a guy, got married. So that was sort of the next phase of things. Wow. Yeah. So then somewhat. Okay so then I, well I was worried about climate change and so I really, I got involved in local kind of grassroots activism. Started a community garden, started a social enterprise around sustainable food. So that was, yeah, that was that. And I was also, so I was home with my son and wanted a kind of connection to the outside world so I also taught myself WordPress and Drupal and kind of had a little home business building websites for people. She's pretty awesome, huh? Okay, so like, so you're doing this, things are good, you're in equilibrium. Like how'd you get here, like what happened next? Okay, so yeah, so I was home with my son being one of those people pushing strollers and very much kind of outside of the working world and had been out of the working world for like 15 years. My husband developed a chronic heart condition and got made redundant. It was a hard, yeah, mic drop. Exactly. Yeah, that was a really hard time. We didn't know what was gonna happen with his health and so we looked at each other and it was like, I need to find a way back into work. And so I started applying for jobs. I can't tell you how many times I got rejected. I... So when you got rejected, what did they tell you? Well, it was interesting. So a lot of times, I mean, I just didn't pattern match, right? I, you know, especially if you're trying to use AI, AI is gonna go, computer says no. And so I did manage to have a few interviews and they'd like go, yeah, you're really great, but no. Yeah, so it was, I was really kind of at a really low point. I mean, I can remember watching people go to work and feeling like I was very much on the outside and they were on the inside and like, why won't you let me in? I can do things, you know? I have something to offer. And so it was incredibly hard, actually. Yes. Sounds really hard. Yeah, it was hard. So the way that I eventually did make it back into the working world was through my community food stuff, I got involved with a startup who was gonna build a food-related, sustainable food-related product. We won a 40,000-pound prize. Sadly, the business idea wasn't very good. So that startup failed. Then I sort of was on the back of that able to get a job at another startup. Again, that startup failed. But at that point I had like, so when you're looking for work, I think there's a lot of suspicion around people who aren't in work, right? There's an assumption that, because somebody else hasn't validated that you're a good employee, that you're just not interesting. And so on the back of that sort of validation of having been employed by a couple startups, I actually started to have more success. And I interviewed with Pivotal. And the Pivotal interview was very much about what I am capable of, rather than pattern matching on some experience that I had done before. So yeah, I've been here three years and I love it. And yeah, so I'm, and I also, it took me a lot of, like I finally feel secure enough to be vulnerable, excuse me, vulnerable enough to share this story because it was a really hard journey. So we heard about pipeline, right? And this kind of nebulous like, where are the people, right? And I think what you're describing is, there are lots of really qualified people who maybe feel like they don't know which door to go in through. For all these people here, like what are some takeaways? Like what does it look like for a company to make it easier to include and have people like you or coming from a career transition come into the workforce again? Yeah. So, return ships are really, actually they're becoming more and more mainstream. What they are is an internship that's geared for women returning to the workplace. People who've been out of the workplace for a while can have a loss of confidence. They can feel like their skills are a bit out of date. And so a return ship is a really positive way. It's the company can, it's a gentle way for a person to re-enter and the company's not making a permanent commitment. So I'm a big fan of that. I would also say that for people who are hiring managers and sorcerers and recruiters, having, breaking apart, being a bit more creative in what you're looking for. I mean, I think that the things that I've done in my life actually make me better at my job than if I had just been in product management the entire time. It's really powerful. So I'm just curious, for people who are in the working world and bump into these people, do you have any advice on how they can help be a bridge? Like, is there any advice if someone knows someone who they think would be a good fit but maybe is coming from a different career, a different industry, coming back to work? Yeah, it actually makes me think of that sponsorship idea where we all have privilege. We're now on the inside. And so if there are people who are on the outside, like lender privilege, I also feel like when you're coming, when you're looking for work, you have to develop a personal brand. You have to kind of decide how you're going to present yourself. And so I could see a place where people spend some time, give their expertise, if their hiring managers say, be open to taking CVs and saying, okay, well, so if you frame your experience this way, or if you just do this other small thing, here's a way back in. Wow, thank you. Thank you. I'd love to give the audience a chance to ask some questions. Any questions? You said you were, oh yeah. Sorry, Graham. No, always, please. So you mentioned that now you feel confident enough and comfortable enough to share your story. And it's funny, I had a sneak preview last week and it struck me that I've known you three years and I had no idea about your story, like no idea at all. And so I just wondered if you could expand a little bit about like how you now feel comfortable, like what has made you feel that you can share it that's made you feel comfortable to feel vulnerable? Yeah, okay. So I finally, I mean, I feel fairly employable. I recently, six months ago, I was promoted to director. I want to give Graham a shout out. He's a really fantastic ally. And I do feel like I have visibility for the work that I do and support and belief in the work that I do in Pivotal. So I am in a place where I can be vulnerable. And I want, I mean, I hope that, yeah, I want to, this is me like trying to pay it forward, I think. Yeah, Nikita. What is your experience with meetups and networking events? Did you have success with that during the years? Is a brilliant question. Thank you for asking that. So it was networking that actually got me back into the working world. So it was, I went to a sustainable food meetup and that's where I met the person who had the startup where we won the 40,000 pounds. And so I do feel like, I mean, it can be really hard, especially if you're feeling insecure and undervalued to turn up at those things and to shake people's hands. But you just don't know what's gonna come out of meeting. You know, a meeting, it could be anything. So I think making those opportunities for yourself is important. This is a question for both of you, which is what advice would you three give people in a position to hire to consider people of diverse backgrounds, be it employment gaps or something else? I would also challenge all of us to think about parenting as not an employment gap, but as skills that apply to a wide variety of careers. I think that's some bullshit that people who are full-time parents aren't seen as working, but whatever. And then from the hiring perspective, Graham, what things would you look to other people in positions of power in people's hiring careers to think about when they talk to recruiters, review CVs, whatever the case might be? So for me, it's about being more creative when you look at somebody's experience and maybe abstracting out the things that you think are important in a role, whether it's, I don't know, maybe communication or leadership or, I don't know, facilitation, I don't know, whatever it is. And recognizing that experience or those skills in somebody when they don't come in the package that you expect. I think from my perspective, I always try and think about distance traveled, which is notionally, it might be really easy for a white male to fall into the right role and get the right promotion. And so take a harder look at maybe the journey that someone else went on and consider how much harder it might have been for them if they couldn't follow that more traditional kind of fall into journey. And I think from an interview perspective, I think we always say pivotal, like pivotal plug, you don't ask a carpenter, how do you feel when you're building a chair? Like you ask to see a chair they've built. And I think similarly, we always think about how we can create an interview process that helps us understand what it's like to actually work with you. What is it like to see and collaborate with the work that you're doing? And that's way more impactful, I think. I think it gives us more signal than show me on a piece of paper the things that you've highlighted that you think might be the things we're looking for. I always challenge everyone to consider like how might you learn more and actually validate for yourself like that this person, yes, will be a great fit. Thanks for sharing your story, Therese. This is a cliche question, but what was the thing that kept you going? Yeah, my husband not being able to work. I didn't have an option. Yeah, otherwise I probably would have given up because it was that hard. Well, we're just about out of time. But thank you both so much for sharing your story. Yeah.